


Eyes Unclouded

by someonestolemyshoes



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: AU, KageHina - Freeform, M/M, Princess Mononoke Inspired, Studio Ghibli
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-15
Updated: 2017-05-15
Packaged: 2018-11-01 07:22:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10917066
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/someonestolemyshoes/pseuds/someonestolemyshoes
Summary: “Move faster!”Tobio nocks a fresh arrow and draws his bow, aiming into the depths of the trees. Feet tumble past, tearing through the thin vegetation, and in the forest the big cats roar, branches and trees parting way for massive bodies, sharp claws and sharper teeth glinting in the shadows.“Hurry up!” Tobio yells, loosing an arrow and reaching for another. There is a thud and a yowl, and the roaring grows louder.Today, they made a mistake.--Deep in the heart of the ancient forest, Tobio meets a kind little spirit, who shows him a whole new side to a very old world.





	Eyes Unclouded

**Author's Note:**

> This was my entry for the HQ!! Ghibli Zine, which is unfortunately no longer happening as planned, but the good news is I get to share it with all of you, along with the fabulous artwork from my collab partner [runqii](http://runqii.tumblr.com/) \- you can see her wonderful piece [here!!](http://runqii.tumblr.com/post/160672154194/this-was-my-piece-for-hq-ghibli-zine-apparently)
> 
> And [here](https://hq-ghibli-zine.tumblr.com/) is a blog where you can find the works of all participants collected together.

“Move faster!”

Tobio nocks a fresh arrow and draws his bow, aiming into the depths of the trees. Feet tumble past, tearing through the thin vegetation, and in the forest the big cats _roar_ , branches and trees parting way for massive bodies, sharp claws and sharper teeth glinting in the shadows.

“Hurry up!” Tobio yells, loosing an arrow and reaching for another. There is a thud and a yowl, and the roaring grows louder.

Today, they made a mistake.

He should have known the expedition was too dangerous, a useless scout for new iron-rich land that would take them too far past the edge of the forest, and they had neither man power nor equipment to handle a battle with the ancient Gods.

“Keep going!” He shouts as the last few men charge by. “To the horses, go!”

“Prince Kageyama!” A figure rushes to stand too close, panting, the heat from their torch drying the sweat that beads over Tobio’s brow. “You too, you must hurry.”

“Go,” he says, and he shoots again. “I’ll hold them off a little longer, get everybody back to the town.”

“But—”  

“—go!”

Tobio shoves at his shoulder, and with a pained, torn look, the man disappears with the rest, clambering upon his mount and fleeing the edge of the forest.

The tumble of the leopard God and his pack comes louder. Tobio lets another arrow fly, and another, and with each shriek of his weapons through the darkness, the growling grows more incessant.

The cats come closer, _louder_ , and only when his final arrow flies does Tobio turn and run.

His horse waits tethered, stamping its hooves and huffing into the rumbling air. Tobio yanks its reins free and hoists himself up, and before he has time to tell it so, his steed is moving.

Their path is precarious. To the left, trees sit close; thick, dark, and looming, stretching for the clouds overhead. To the right, the world disappears over the edge of a cliff, the lip of the path crumbling beneath his horse’s hooves and dropping into the river below.

Somewhere too close behind, the giant cats burst onto the path. They are clumsy, scratching claws and snapping jaws, fueled by _rage_ , eyes glowing red in their sockets. Tobio spurs his horse on and holds tight with his knees, slipping his dagger from his belt. It won’t be much use against a God, he knows, but Tobio never planned on dying lying down.

The God won’t stray out of the forest. The boundary will be _safe_ , if he can make it, and Tobio can see the trees thinning up ahead, light bleeding onto the path. Behind him the cats yowl, branches whipping and snapping from the trees. _Too close_. Tobio gives another firm kick of his heels and _yes_ , they’re almost there, almost out of reach, almost—

—his horse screams, a shrill, wrecked cry, and its flank whips over the edge of the cliff. Hot, heavy paws swing too close, scrape over Tobio’s back and rip—rip his clothes, his skin, and he barely has time to yell his pain before he and his horse arefalling.

The descent is a blur. There is pain, but there isn’t _enough_ pain, not for the amount of blood seeping out of him; it whirls in the air around him, pours from gashes he cannot see and slaps at his skin, warm and wet and oh so _red_.

Tobio hits the water. He might float or he might sink, he doesn’t know which, but he knows he doesn’t have the energy to swim. Doesn’t have the sense. His grasp of the world around him has dribbled down to nothing but the cold press of rushing water, the sting of open wounds and a light, shining from whatever lies beyond.

* * *

The afterlife is…strange.

Tobio had expected an awful lot of things; a heaven or a hell, a rebirth, perhaps even cold, blank nothingness, but what he gets instead is a boy.

A man, glowing like the sun, with hair of red and skin a pale, milky white, dotted with freckles like burnt-out stars in a blinding sky. He is radiant, a strange, ethereal glow bleeding from every part of him, and his hands are soft where they slide over the ragged skin of Tobio’s back.

Most times, the boy is smiling. His face is _alive_ with it, big amber eyes twinkling in the glare from his very skin, and sometimes he says words, though Tobio can never make them out.

He drifts, in this place. Drifts between sleep and wake, darkness and light, and every time he opens his eyes, this man is by his side with smooth, warm palms and a warmer smile to guide him.

* * *

Tobio blinks, and the world around him blurs into focus.

Today, he is lying on his back. There is no pain where there should be pain, no sting or throb, and no _heat_ , and for the first time—in how long? He doesn’t know—he sees thick, leafy branches overhead, feels the bark at his back, scrapes it beneath his nails, and for the first time in _forever_ , it seems, he breathes.

“Ah!”

Tobio sits up sharply. On the other end of the branch, legs swinging over the edge into the empty, endless air below, sits the man. In this light, Tobio can still see the shine winking from his skin, but it isn’t as bright nor as vibrant as it was before—a trick of the sun, maybe, but nothing special.

“You’re finally awake!” He says, swinging his legs up on the branch and tucking them to his chest. “Good, I thought you were _never_ gonna come round. It’d be a shame, too, ‘cause I wasted _loads_ of the forest’s power to patch you up. I couldn’t save your horse, though, or some of your clothes, but I got that fancy bow of yours and—”  

“Who are you?”

Tobio’s voice comes booming, commanding, the tone he uses on intruders to the town and for a moment, the man’s face falls slack.

Then he smiles, and wriggles his toes into the bark. He is _small_ , Tobio notes, little feet and narrow shoulders, torso shrouded in loose hangings of fur. He’s oddly _cute_ , Tobio thinks, which is strange, because he has never really thought another person to be cute before. It’s in those big eyes, maybe, and the little upturn of his nose, the faint pink hue over his cheeks and his _smile_ —Tobio’s heart stutters in his chest. He rests a palm over it (his skin is bare, the tattered remains of his robe hanging open off his shoulders) and frowns.

“Oh, sorry,” the man says, shuffling along the branch until the two of them are toe to toe, “my name is Shouyou, and I’m a forest spirit!”

Tobio narrows his eyes, and drags himself back, all the way until he hits the trunk of the tree. The man before him is smiling, wide-eyed and earnest, and _mad_. Insane. He has to be, must’ve been cooked up in the forest for too long.

“The forest spirit,” Tobio starts slowly, carefully, so as not to upset this strange, deranged man, “is…supposed to be some kind of deer, I think.”

“I said _a_ forest spirit, stupid! Not _the_ forest spirit.”

“Oi, that’s no way to talk to a _prince_. Besides,” Kageyama says, “you look…pretty human to me.”

The spirit shrugs a pale shoulder and crosses his ankles, curls his arms around bony knees.

“I’m a spirit,” he says, “a human one, maybe, but I’m still a spirit, and I still belong to the forest.”

Shouyou runs a palm over the branch, and Tobio watches the way his eyes fall closed, the wrinkle of his brows and the scrunch of his nose. He watches the way he breathes, long, slow, in through his nose and out through his mouth, and the tree—it’s _impossible,_ surely, but Tobio is sure that the wood beneath him shudders.

“I might look human, but I’m a part of the forest as much as any of the Gods that live here, you know?” Shouyou opens his eyes and smiles, but there is something pinched to it, a cloak that shrouds some of the light in his eyes. “I feel its pain just the same as they do.”

“The forest isn’t one being,” Tobio says, and Shouyou cocks his head. “It’s…a forest. It’s trees and flowers and grass and stones, rivers and animals, spirits, _Gods_ —it’s a million different things.”

“If it wasn’t all one thing,” Shouyou says, a tiny frown creasing his brow, “then why’d you call it a forest, huh? Why give a name to a million different things?”

“Because it’s a _place_ , stupid—”

“—that’s no way to talk to someone who saved your _life_ —”

“—places have names. Towns have names, and they’re a million different things, too.”

“Towns,” Shouyou says, twisting the word on his tongue. He rolls it in his mouth, plays it again, then he adds, “those big, built-up places you humans have? With all the houses and the people?”

Tobio nods, and Shouyou drops his knees to the sides and presses both hands in the gap behind his crossed ankles.

“I mean, they’re only _towns_ because of all those millions of things, right?”

“What—”

“—I mean, if there was only one building, one house and one human, it wouldn’t be a town, would it?”

“No,” Tobio says, brows digging between his eyes, “it’d be a _house_.”

“Right, and if the forest was only one tree, it’d be a tree.”

Shouyou stands, stretches from his toes to his fingers, and slaps his palms to his hips. Thin, early morning sunlight bleeds through the trees and dapples his skin, and with every second that goes by Shouyou seems to absorb it; it fills him up, brightens that strange glow until it blazes warm and bright, a halo around him. Tobio swallows at the sight, and digs his nails into the bark. _Cute_.

“It takes all those millions of things—the trees and the animals and the Gods—it takes all of it to make the forest. If just one were missing, it’d be something else, you know? Like your towns would be something else without all the little parts that make them whole.”

Tobio opens his mouth to reply, but as he does, something clatters overhead, an echoing _click_ , and from the bushy branches, a little white face pops out. Tobio watches it’s tiny, blank eyes as it tips its head and bobbles, rattling again. The tiny thing steps out and Shouyou grins, stretches up a hand, and the airy spirit walks the length of his arm to sit on his shoulder, stubby hands grabbing at it’s own stubby feet.

“That’s…true,” Tobio says, “but even back in my town, I can’t feel when my neighbour stubs his toe. His pain isn’t my pain.”

Shouyou hums, draws his mouth to one side in thought, and the little spirit on his shoulder rattles.

“Here,” Shouyou says suddenly, nudging at Tobio’s foot. “You’re feeling better, right? Follow me.”

Tobio clambers gingerly to his feet. His wounds are healing—they shouldn’t be; they _should_ be killing him, should have already killed him—and there is energy humming in his veins where they should be cold, still. The forest spirit slips down from this branch to the next, and Tobio, slinging his empty quiver and his bow across his shoulders, follows.

They meander down the giant tree until they reach the soft forest floor, and from there, Shouyou leads a path through the mossy undergrowth, bare feet making no impression on the spongy ground. Tobio treads with care, for popping out of the bushes are more of the little rattling spirits, spinning their heads and pattering along in Shouyou’s wake.

Shouyou smiles warmly at the noisy intruders. He welcomes them as they clamber to his shoulders, extends his arms to give them more room and soon there is a line of them, squeezed together from outstretched fingertip to outstretched fingertip. Shouyou laughs brightly at the tickle of them where they sit over his skin. Tobio’s stomach balls tight, and something hot unfurls in his chest, squeezes the air from his lungs.

The spirits are smiling, too, each with blank, stretched mouths carving crescents over their faces. They sway with Shouyou’s steps, all of them tipping to the left and then to the right, and Tobio watches one slip off of Shouyou’s hand and clasp at his thumb to keep from falling.

A louder rattle echoes right in Tobio’s ear and he starts, staggers to the side and twists his head to see another one—this one with a big, ovular head and a tiny little o for a mouth—and Tobio darts a hand to flick it away.

“Don’t!” Shouyou says, and when Tobio looks up, those glowing amber eyes are watching him. “Kodama aren’t dangerous. They live in the trees, just like me! Only…a lot smaller, and there are an awful lot more of them.”

Tobio eyes the kodama on his shoulder a little warily. It stares back, and then it tilts its head, cranks up, and rattles its way still.

“See?” Shouyou says. Another kodama clambers up atop his head and settles, tiny hands grabbing fistfuls of his fiery hair.

Tobio feels a tug on his trouser leg. Looking down, he sees yet another spirit, it’s fist curled in the fabric of Tobio’s pants, and as he stares it pulls again, and then it stretches both arms high up in the air towards him.  

“He’s tired,” Shouyou says, and the smile on his face fades a little. “Give him a hand, huh?”

Tobio looks from Shouyou to the kodama and back again. Then, hesitant, he bends at the knee, and stretches a hand for the spirit to take.

It’s odd, watching the little thing climb up his skin, for the weight of it barely registers. It’s just…warm, where it sits on his palm, and Tobio lifts it all the way up to his face to get a closer look.

The kodama is almost translucent. It’s skin glows in the sunlight just like Shouyou’s, and if Kageyama squints at the little things stomach he can see the spirits outline, murky like shadow, and the wobbly line of the other kodama tracking over his arms.

The kodama tips its head and rattles, and Tobio moves to set it on his shoulder alongside its friend.

“C’mon!” Shouyou says, and when Tobio looks again he is grinning once more, soaking up the sunlight where it bleeds hotter through the trees. He turns, and Tobio follows.

The damp, pillowed moss beneath their feet grows drier as they walk. The rattling of tiny heads falls quiet, and the procession of kodama dim down to none, save the rally riding Shouyou’s arms and the two sitting warm and soft on Tobio’s shoulder.

Even they don’t rattle. They sit still, smiles vanished from their faces, and around him Tobio feels the forest grow…colder. Quieter. Even the sun doesn’t seem to shine; the sky is grey, and cloud sits low amongst the half-bare branches of towering trees.

Tobio sniffs, and and telltale scent of smoke reaches his nose.

“Shouyou,” he says, drawing to a stop. The kodama on his shoulder sway.

“Hm?” Says the spirit, climbing up from the barren earth to stand atop a rock.

“Fire,” he says, “something’s burning.”

“It’s already burned,” Shouyou says. His arms fall to his sides and the kodama roll from his skin, melting into the foggy air.  

He continues to climb from one rock to another, higher over a piling mound, and Tobio adjusts his bow across his chest. He hops onto the first rock and then, as an afterthought, turns his head to the two kodama.

“Just…hold on, if you wanna stay.”

And then, he climbs.

Shouyou’s feet make the softest of patters over the rock, so quiet that the clicks and thuds of Tobio’s boots sound heavy in the air. The smell of smoke grows thicker the higher they go, and at the top, Shouyou stills. He sits on the highest rock with his legs crossed, his hands pressed into his lap. The little spirit atop his head rattles, and the sound is booming in the quiet.

At the top of the rock face, Tobio stops.

Before him is a _wasteland_. Where there should be trees, there are only burning, smoking stumps, splintering up from blackened grass and stretching for the murky sky. There are no kodama here; there is nowhere for them to live, no foliage to hide behind, and staring at this husk of forest, Tobio can finally feel the weight of the little spirits on his shoulder.

They grow heavy, and Tobio grows heavy with them.

“This is…I mean, how did…”

“How did it happen?” Shouyou asks. Tobio nods his head; how can so much destruction reach so deep into the forest?

“Humans,” Shouyou says. “These are the wounds they leave on our land, and this—this is the pain I feel.”

Tobio shakes his head. That _can’t_ be right; his missions have never taken them so far into the trees, never stretched beyond the outskirts of the forest.

“My people wouldn’t come this far—”

“—maybe they aren’t all _your_ people.”

Shouyou is still glowing beside him, bleeding pale orange light even in the smoke, but he is fading the longer they sit, and Tobio watches as the glimmer trickles from his eyes.

He opens his mouth to speak—to suggest they leave, head back to the safety of the forest spirits tree—but before he can speak, Shouyou raises one long finger and points down into the smoking remains of the forest.

“Look there,” he says softly. Tobio’s eyes follow the line of his arm, through the smoke-filled air to the dry ground, and there, amongst the ashes, he sees a gathering of monstrous birds. They are _huge_ , towering figures, bigger than Tobio by two, _three_ times, big and black and hulking.

Spirits, he thinks; more spirits of the forest.

And in the middle of their circle, between a spiral of pointed black beaks, is a body. A body of another bird, larger still than the rest, its great wings spread wider and smouldering against the earth. Tobio’s breath catches in his throat. A God, dead amongst the wreckage. The sight stirs something acrid within him; it takes more than _fire_ to fell a God.

It takes weapons, man-made guns with bullets that can cleave flesh from bone, lodge deep within the ancients and poison them, wreck them from the inside out.

Tobio knows, for Tobio helped design them.

“They’re hurting,” Shouyou says, nodding to the giant crows. “But their hurt will turn to anger soon enough. You should leave the forest before then, now that you’re better.”

“Why?” Tobio asks. “I didn’t do this.”

Shouyou tips his head, and there is a sadness in his eyes that runs so deep, Tobio can feel it in the rock beneath his fingertips.

“You’re human,” he says. “You’re all the same to them.”

“I never…I never wanted this,” he says. Tobio has known loss, known destruction, known _pain_ beyond measure and in all his plans and his schemes and his visions as a Prince, as a ruler over his people, he never wanted for others to suffer in the ways he and his people have known.

Not people, not Gods, not little forest spirits with big hearts and kind, healing hands.

“Maybe not,” Shouyou says, and he sighs, and tucks his knees to his chest. “But it happened all the same, didn’t it?”

One of the crows lifts head to the sky and opens its beak, and from its throat drags a long, piercing shriek. Tobio turns his head to look at the rock instead.

“I’ve seen enough,” he says. The two kodama on his shoulder grow heavier still, sit with such weight it hurts to bear it. “Why did you—why did you show me this?”

“The forest healed you, you know? I mean, I helped, but one spirit alone doesn’t have all that much power.” Shouyou cocks his head, and the little light in his eyes flickers. “I just…wanted you to see the hand you humans have bitten, I guess.”

Tobio turns his back to the waste and settles against the rock.

The kodama rattle, and behind him, the crows laments grow louder for their fallen God. That awful sound, and the smoke, and the ashes drowning the forest floor—they are the work of men. Of humans with nothing but ignorance for the Gods and the spirits and the forest itself. Humans who have never known the world beyond the trees, who assumed only danger; who never knew of the kodama, hundreds upon hundreds of tiny spirits whose home they have willfully destroyed, and of Shouyou, of spirits who are good and kind and gentle, even to the monsters who have maimed their land.

And just like that, Tobio doesn’t want to be a part of it. Tobio doesn’t want to go on in his ignorance, to lead a people willing to destroy a world they don’t know.

Just like that, Tobio would rather stay.

“What if…” he starts, plucking the two weighty kodama from his shoulder and settling them in his crossed legs. They blink up at him, and crank their heads. “What if I didn’t go back?”

Shouyou grabs at his ankles and cocks his head.

“What if I stayed here? I could…I could stop my people coming into the forest. I could stop them hurting it. I owe that much.”

“The Gods might kill you, if they find you.”

“They’ve already tried once,” Tobio says, wiggling his fingers where the kodama grab at them, little blank grins opening their faces. Shouyou is grinning too, and as his smile grows wider, Tobio’s chest squeezes tighter. “And you put me back together once already. But…if I do stay, I’ll need somewhere to sleep.”

Suddenly, Shouyou is in his personal space. He’s so close his big, shining eyes are one huge blur in the middle of his face, and the warmth bleeding from him oozes into Kageyama skin.

“I have space in my tree!”

Kageyama holds out his hand in the little space between them, and the corners of his mouth tuck up in a smile.

“Then, if you’ have me, I’ll stay. I’ll help. Do we have a deal?”

Shouyou looks between Tobio’s hand and his face, back and forth and back and forth, and then he shoves his hand out, too, fingertips tickling right against Tobio’s nose.

“Deal. Welcome to the forest, Prince.”

**Author's Note:**

>  _'You must see with eyes unclouded by hate. See the good in that which is evil, and the evil in that which is good. Pledge yourself to neither side, but vow instead to preserve the balance that exists between the two.'_ \- Hayao Miyazaki 
> 
> \-- 
> 
> Thank you so much for reading! I hope you took the time to enjoy runqii's beautiful artwork, as well as all the other wonderful pieces people created for this zine. Comments/kudos/bookmarks are all much appreciated, and if you'd like to chat more, feel free to come talk to me on my tumblr - [someone-stole-my-shoes](http://someone-stole-my-shoes.tumblr.com/)


End file.
